His hands became aware, then, of what he was doing to the girl, and hot blood flooded his neck, interest rose in him, fast. “What’s your name, darling?” he asked.
She said that it was Carolle. She spelled it for him.
Chapter 22
THE WEEKEND PASSED. Monday passed, and Tuesday and Wednesday. Ralph Guild continued to work two shifts, coming home almost too tired to admire the new baby.
Jim Latson continued to run the police department.
Dave Corday attended daily conferences with the D.A. and Frederick Van Lear, helping pass the control over.
Planes flew the Atlantic and carried mail.
Captain Martin took over the Gardens Precinct, No. II, and had lunch with the director of the Zoological Park, the curator of the Botanical Gardens. They seemed delighted at having such an intelligent police officer to work with, and each of them lent him books on zoos and garden parks. He began to wonder if he hadn’t been a fool not to get a job like this a long time ago.
On Thursday morning, Jim Latson’s secretary put a small stack of mail on his desk. It was so small that he could not long avoid opening the letter with the Italian stamp. He unfolded the flimsy Par Avion paper, expecting the usual report on the Pope’s health and the usual request for money.
But this was a little different. This was kind of final. This was the request for a divorce.
“I have consulted a Vatican lawyer and—”
He didn’t want to read any more. This could be the end, this could be the sort of trouble that couldn’t be handled… The end of political pull, the end of power, but not the end of his life.
Automatically, he unlocked the drawer where he kept his bank books. But they weren’t there, of course; he’d mailed them to a cover name in New York.
It didn’t worry him that they weren’t there, though he would have liked to know how much money he could count on if all his sources of revenue were suddenly cut off.
But it did worry him that he had expected them to be in their usual place; that he had forgotten something as important as that. He flipped his squawk-box and said, “I’m going home for a while…”
During the day the front door of Jim Latson’s apartment house was kept open, and a clerk sat at the desk. At night they locked the front door, and there was a night watchman who prowled the lobby, the basement garage, and the halls. If you forgot your key, you had to ring for him.
But this was day, and the desk clerk was on duty. He stood up straight as Chief Latson approached him, and said, “There’s a man to see you, Chief!” He was twenty-two and would have liked an appointment to the police department, but could not pass the physical.
Jim Latson turned slowly, and stared at the man rising from the straight-backed Spanish chair and ambling toward him. In the years since he had left the house he had bought for his wife, nobody had ever come to his apartment without an invitation.
So this was a new thing to him, but no more alarming than any of the other new things he’d met in all his years; neither was it stimulating. New things were much like old things to Jim Latson.
The man was a complete stranger; there was not the slightest twinge of memory as his face came into full light. “I’m James Latson. You were waiting for me?”
“Yes, Mr. Latson. I’ve got a matter to discuss with you.”
“Come on to my office tomorrow. I work for the police department.”
This was sarcasm. But the man neither flinched nor smiled. “It’s a private matter, Mr. Latson. I’d better see you in your apartment.”
“Mister, anything you’ve got to say to me—”
The stranger was staring at Eddie, the day clerk. Then he turned his head slowly and looked straight at Jim Latson. Even more slowly the lid of the stranger’s right eye came down and rested; then it raised again. He had, Latson realized, extraordinarily large eyes, a small nose, a tight mouth, a weak chin.
Jim Latson said, “Let’s get upstairs. I’ll give you five minutes.”
The man bowed. He didn’t just nod his head, which is what most Americans think of when they think of bowing; he bowed from the waist, in the European fashion.
Latson pushed past him and into the elevator. He pressed the button to close the door, and his visitor just managed to push past the sliding gate.
The car went up to Latson’s floor, stopped, the doors started opening by themselves. Latson pointed with his chin for the stranger to get out first, but the man gave him a queer, confident smile, and Latson shrugged and went ahead of him, fishing the apartment key out as he did so.
He opened the door, started in; he could almost feel the other man’s breath on his neck.
Then Jim Latson stopped abruptly, turned, brought his shoulder up under the stranger’s chin, caught the man’s wrists and jerked.
The stranger was caught up sharply, his Adam’s apple banging into Jim Latson’s shoulder, his head snapping back.
Latson shoved the door closed, brought the stranger around in front of him and slapped his face, hard, with each hand.
The man went backward, out of the little hall into the living room. Jim Latson kept after him, jabbing him in the wind with stiff fingers, rapping his belly with hard knuckles, cutting at the bridge of his nose with the edge of a hand.
The man got to a chair, collapsed in it, sobbing for breath. Blood was running from both nostrils.
Jim Latson tore at the heavy cloth of the stranger’s blue serge suit till he had the man’s wallet. Then he went into the bathroom, got a hotel towel, and threw it hard into the bleeding face. “Keep your dirty blood off my furniture.”
There was silence then, as the man mopped at his nose, finally got his breath back. Latson thumbed through the wallet, grunting once or twice, then threw it into the blue serge lap, and went into the kitchenette.
He returned with a highball in his hand. He didn’t offer one to his visitor, nor a cigarette; just lit up for himself, and sat in the best chair, crossing his legs, sipping at the highball, puffing on his cigarette. Finally he said, “All right. Your name is Neal Harrison, you’re from Chicago and you’re licensed in a half dozen states to be a private detective. Any part of that give you the idea you ran force me into letting you in my apartment? Anything in your past experience give you the idea you can wink at an executive police officer and not get a bloody nose?”
Harrison had pulled himself together a good deal. The bloody towel lay on the floor next to him; his hands were square on his knees, and his face was composed. A shadow under one eye indicated he might well have a black eye by tomorrow. “All right,” he said. “You’ve had your fun, Chief. I came here to do you a favor, and I get a beating. So all right. Now I don’t do you the favor. Now I’m getting out of here.”
Latson laughed. “Just like that?”
There was a remarkable amount of calm self-confidence in Harrison’s voice. “Just like that, Chief. Guys know I came up here; if I don’t come back, they’ll know who to tell. So now, good-by.”
Jim Latson said, “Twenty-five years a cop. I’m the top of the heap in this town.”
Harrison told him what it was a heap of.
Jim Latson started forward, and then stopped. He said, “I’m fascinated, little man. A two-bit private detective! You’ve been around. You know what I can do to you, and not a mark on you that you could show anybody. A double hernia, a rib in your lung, a ruptured kidney. You want all those things?”
Harrison said calmly, “Sure, I been around. So have you, Chief. You know I got the cards or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Play ’em.”
“No, sir,” Harrison said. “No, sir. I came here to do you a favor. It woulda cost you some money. Sure. You think I want to work all my life? But money, you got plenty of it. You got a bank account in New York, in the Union Bank, you got one in Chicago, in—”
Jim Latson sat quietly, his cigarette smoking in his fingers, his highball warming in his palm, while Harrison recited a list of Jim Latson’s bank acco
unts. When he finished, Harrison added, still in a monotone, “Want to know the amounts? In New York you got—”
“Let it go,” Latson said. “How much?”
Harrison shook his head. “I’m being a sucker,” he said. “Noses heal, a black eye turns white again. Money, it sticks to your ribs, but I’m being a sucker; I’m going to see you where you sent so many guys. In the State Pen.”
He stood up, moved to the door. His hat had never come off in all the trouble.
Latson said, “You’re a good man. The district attorney’s office needs one. He doesn’t have to come from the police ranks.”
Harrison was nearly to the door. “District attorney’s office? I don’t need you to get in there. It was your pal, the assistant D.A., that tipped Mrs. Latson off.” He gave his foreign bow again—it was obvious now that he used it for the mockery that sustained his meager soul—and started for the door.
“Wait a minute,” Jim Latson said. “You’re working for my wife.”
“Right the first time,” Harrison said. “Twenty-five years a cop, and he figures things out fast. Sure. I’m to get divorce evidence. She’s got a list of your dames; your friend Corday sent it to her in Rome. I hear around town he’s about your best friend—and I’m not surprised. By, now.”
Latson said sharply, “Drop the cheap patter. We can do business. I just want to get everything straight. Corday sent her a list of the women I’ve been seeing.”
“That’s a nice word for it—seeing.”
“It smells like Corday,” Jim Latson said. “Sneaking to my wife. But how come the checkbooks?”
“You are not very fast,” Harrison said. “Not very sharp. A list—what’s that? She needs evidence. She sends us—my agency—the list. They give it to me. They say, watch this jerk. What they say do, I do. And I am watching when you write the Hotel Plaza in New York.”
“Robbing the mails,” Jim Latson said. “A federal squeal.”
“You’re not likely to turn it in,” Neal Harrison said. “Those books go to the opposition politically, or they go to a newspaper, or even to your own party—and you’re through. You are eating in a prison messhall. And don’t say squeal, Chief. Say case. Squeal is language for gutter types like me. Lowdown private detectives without social standing.”
Latson went ahead of him, put his thin, high shoulders against the door. “All right. The bank books are no good without my signature. How much do you want, and I’ll write a check on any bank you name—and you are the little man who can name them.”
Harrison said. “Little, but I got my pride. Isn’t it a funny thing, I didn’t know it? But I’m sore now, and likely to stay so. The evidence on your dames goes to Mrs. Latson. But the other—I ought to send it to her, too. It would raise her alimony, wouldn’t it, and she’d like that, she could give it to the church, and my grandma was a Catholic, I think.”
“Stop clowning.”
“Little guys always clown. It saves their dignity. Out of my way, Chief.” He walked to the door, put his hand on it. “But I’m not going to send the dope on your bank accounts to your wife, ’cause she wouldn’t know what to do with it. I’m sending it to the opposition. Your party’ll have to ditch you or lose the next election. You’re through, Chief.”
Jim Latson began to laugh. The deep creases of his face got deeper. “You’ve overplayed, small fry. I think you’re lying.”
This was so astounding that it turned Neal Harrison around, the doorknob forgotten. “Lying? Mister, I didn’t make up that list of banks. I couldn’t.”
Jim Latson felt genuine amusement coming up in him. It was going to be all right. He had never had more trouble in one day than he could handle in that day. He said, “Not lying about the list. You intercepted the letter all right. But you are lying about—Let’s see what you said—guys knowing you came here. You never told a soul. Cheap chiselers don’t.”
He stood there, chuckling, and moved forward, his hands swinging at his sides, enjoying the fear that grew in Neal Harrison’s eyes. “You don’t matter, chiseler. Corday doesn’t matter. It’s the second time he’s tried to get me, and he can have three tries for his dime. You can’t touch me, any of you.”
He caught the front of Harrison’s cheap coat, as he had before, but this time he lifted him off his feet. “You haven’t got a gun, and you think that saves your life. But I’ve got a half dozen pistols in my bedroom, and none of them registered. I plant one on you, and you’re a dirty-necked holdup man. Eddie downstairs’ll believe what I tell him. I’m his hero.”
Neal Harrison gasped. “I told guys. I—if I don’t come back I—”
“What guys?”
The thin, slack mouth said nothing.
“You’re not even a good liar.”
He hit Harrison then, hit him in the belly hard, with a clenched fist. “Give me that list! All my life a cop, and every blackmailer I ever heard of said the papers were some place safe, said people knew where they were going.” His fist beat punctuation to the speech. “And they lied! They lied!”
Then he had to let go. Neal Harrison had passed out.
Jim Latson let the little man fall to the carpet, forgetting his worry about bloodstains. He went and mixed himself another highball, and waited. Time was on his side; it always had been. After a while, Mr. Harrison would come to.
And then he would talk. And those bank books would turn up. They would not go to any politician or to any newspaper; Neal Harrison would talk and they would go right back to Jim Latson, where they belonged.
Maybe he would have to resign from office because of the divorce. But he would resign with his money intact and without a trial, and certainly without a prison sentence.
Having sized up the situation, Jim Latson waited. He waited because there was nothing else to do; and he never tried the impossible.
Chapter 23
WHEN THE EDITION HAD ROLLED, the city editor of the News-Journal turned his desk over to the day city editor, and strolled over to Harry Weber’s desk. He said, “Let’s go see the boss.”
Harry had been expanding feature stories for the Sunday paper; he was glad to stop. He followed the city editor down to the rich end of the room, and passed a secretary into the managing editor’s plush office.
Ward Candle, the managing editor, was thin, black-haired, very well dressed. He said Harry’s name at once, a good boss, and waved them to seats.
“Still hot on that Corday hunch, Harry?” On his desk was a folder containing the morgue clippings Harry had dug up on Corday and Latson and Captain Martin.
“I’m still convinced Cap Martin got something on Corday and got bounced out to the sticks for it,” Harry said. “I am not at all convinced that I am good enough to dig it up. I tried.”
“I can add a little something,” Ward Candle said. “Corday’s wife committed suicide in Kansas City a few weeks ago. Mean anything to you?”
Harry Weber frowned. “Suicide is death and so is homicide. Which could bring Captain Martin in. Where was Corday when it happened?”
Candle laughed. “I thought of that. We put a couple of legmen on it. They place him in a movie—here—that night.”
Harry Weber said, “Too bad.”
Ward Candle lit a cigarette, smiling. “The good reporter does his work without heat, without personal prejudice… Frankly, the publisher would like to see Corday out of office. But more particularly, he’d like to see Latson out. I want you to get on it, Harry.”
Harry Weber said, “Yes, sir.”
“It seems obvious that Latson is involved. That letter from Corday to Latson’s wife; I happen to know that they don’t know each other socially, she doesn’t attend political parties, Corday has never been on the guest list of any of the plush charity affairs she does give.”
The city editor said, “It would look like Corday was sending money out of the country. His pal Latson’s wife could be banking it for him abroad.”
Ward Candle said, “That wouldn’t be honest money.�
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Harry Weber said, “No, sir.”
Ward Candle said, “Don’t jump at conclusions. All we’ve really got is your impression that Dave Corday was scared, and got over it when he found out that Martin was out of Homicide.”
Harry said, “Which leaves the Italian letter out in left field.”
Ward Candle said, “Maybe he thought he was about to go into the soup over the homicide matter—if it was homicide—and sent extra money away quick to take care of him if he had to run.”
Harry said, “A man doesn’t have to be in Kansas City to kill someone there. Not a man whose work has brought him into contact with paid killers.”
Ward Candle’s voice got sharp. “This is exactly the sort of conclusion I don’t want you jumping to. Get on it, but move carefully. We don’t want a libel suit. If we don’t get Corday—and Latson, particularly Latson—we want to keep our in with them for stories.”
“I’ll start with Corday.”
Ward Candle laughed. “You’re smart. I’ve always thought Dave Corday was nothing much more than a highly educated dog. But Jim Latson’s a hell of a big lion to find in your den.”
“My name isn’t Daniel, but I feel like him.” Harry Weber stood up.
Ward Candle said, “I hope this works. If they hadn’t transferred Captain Martin, maybe we wouldn’t be bothering. He was the biggest asset Police Headquarters had.”
Chapter 24
JIM LATSON said, “I wish you’d stay with me awhile.” Neal Harrison looked up at the tall cop, and giggled foolishly. His eyes were rolled back in his head and slobber had run down his chin, bloody slobber that stained his shirt. The peculiarly disagreeable odor of the cold sweat of fear pervaded the room.
Jim Latson swore calmly and went and got a jigger glass full of whisky. He wore an expression of extreme distaste as he held Harrison’s head up, forced the whisky down his throat.
Jim Latson just jumped back in time to keep the liquor from spewing over him.
But some of it had stuck in Harrison. Slowly his eyes rolled down, his lips started moving, he swallowed a couple of times and even coughed.
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